Module Overview

Section 1

• Laws and rules relating specifically to optometrists and dispensing opticians
• Laws relating to professionals generally: children, advertising, data protection.
• Ethical and professional issues: codes of ethics and conduct.
• CORU Code of Professional Conduct and Ethics for Dispensing Opticians and Optometrists.
• Eyecare delivery in Ireland.
• Optometric professional and regulatory organizations in Ireland and abroad.
• Eye care delivery in Europe and elsewhere.

Section 2

This module in Intercultural Health Communication aims to make the future ECP able to assess how their communication approach and cultural prejudices may influence the different practitioner / patient relationships that they are likely to encounter in the daily practice of their profession. In this context, the necessary verbal, paraverbal and non-verbal communication skills will be analysed and practised as an essential component of modern clinical skills and patient management. This will be complemented by the acquisition of cross-cultural strategies designed to help manage cross-cultural miscommunication.

• Different communication patterns and different types of questions and statements in order to structure communication for the different phases of the practitioner-patient encounters (e.g. case history/main reason for visit, transition between case-history and eye tests, eye tests, presentation of findings / management plan).
• Communication strategies to deal with difficult encounters (listening skills, low vs high levels of empathy, dealing with objections and bad news, principles of conflict management).
• Factors influencing compliance positively or negatively and use of Health Belief Model
• Personality and communication styles.
• Different types of challenging patients, including deaf and visually impaired (sighted guide technique).
• Therapeutic relationships applied to eye care (e.g. Szasz and Hollander model, Stewart and Roter’s spectrum of high and low control, Mead and Bower’s conceptual framework of patient-centred care, shared-decision making and use of patient-decision aids).
• Communication with paediatric patients and their guardian(s).
• Introduction to selling techniques.
• Intercultural dimensions and orientations and how they may lead to cultural misunderstanding (incl. conflictual situations and discriminatory attitudes) with illustrations in the healthcare context (e.g. Hall, Hoffstede, Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner).
• Models for Promoting Culturally Competent Patient-Provider Communication (e.g. Kleinmann, LEARN, ETHNIC, …).
• Cross-cultural strategies (stumbling blocks to cross-cultural competence, ethnocentricity vs. ethnorelativity, cultural mediators, use of HSE intercultural communication guidelines) Characteristics of trained vs untrained translators and acceptable vs unacceptable strategies when dealing with translators / interpreters (including children and sign-language).
• Tips for communicating with LEP (Limited English Proficiency) patients  and other service users.

 

 

Section 1

• Lectures and tutorials
• Self study

Section 2

• Lectures
• Practical tutorials and role-play scenarios
• Computer-based learning
• Analysis of videos illustrating bad vs good intercultural health communication practice
• Guided independent learning and self-directed learning

Section 1: 12 hours (1 hour/week in semester 1, taught by an optometrist.)

Section 2: 36 hours (1 hour / week lecture x 24 in semesters 1 and 2 + 1 hour practical x 12)

 

Module Content & Assessment
Assessment Breakdown	%
Formal Examination	18
Other Assessment(s)	82